Evolution of consumers' preferences has been recognized by many scholars as being key to understanding technological change. However, mainstream economics cannot account for the seemingly irrational behavior of consumers based on changes in taste – consumer theory lacks exibility and accuracy...

The Bank of Finland’s Finnish Payment Habits 2010 project predicts that Finnish payment habits will face substantial changes. The causes for these changes include: the standardisation and integration of European payment systems, development of payment services-related legislation and...

Purpose – Emphasis on the importance of halal products is now growing. It is fast becoming a new market force and brand identifier and is now moving into the mainstream market, affecting and changing perception on how business should be conducted, including from a marketing point of view. The...

Lock-in denotes a phenomenon of monopolistic dominating technologies or consumer goods in a certain market. These lock-ins cannot be explained by superior characteristics of the good or technology. Previous studies mainly used probabilistic models to study lock-in effects. In this paper an...

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate critically the assumption that the main reason for acquiring domestic services from the off-the-books economy is to save money. Design/methodology/approach – Data are reported from an internet survey of 5,500 people living in households with one or more...

The analysis consisted in a field experiment performed by testing the opinions of different consumers groups: two of them located in the European Regions respectively: Friuli-Venezia-Giulia in Italy and Navarra in Spain; a third one located in the Ontario region, Canada. The data were processed...

Against the background of diverse food scandals this article investigates the role of trust as a determinant of consumer behaviour in Germany. As empirical analyses indicate the impact of trust on consumer behaviour in a quotidian and presumably safe setting is to be neglected. In the...

The recent food crises and its great diffusion through the media had as consequence a reduction of the European consumer's confidence, in general, and of the Portuguese ones in particular, in the products that they buy and consume. These events also served to disclose some of the existing...

Food safety crises usually receive widespread publicity and an extensive media coverage which evidently is mainly negative. Based on previous research, the purpose of this article is to illustrate the impact of positive and negative food safety information on demand both in the short and long...